Things that Fall Together
by 95Echelon
Summary: Some things were never meant to be. (Hermione left.) Some things are destiny. (Neville arrived at his doorstep one cold October evening.)
1. Chapter 1

**Things that Fall Together**

(or the one in which I ship the oddest ship I have ever shipped. It works out well. Thank heavens.)  
**  
Disclaimer: **not mine, clearly  
**Warnings:** Alcoholism, references to torture and PTSD

* * *

It doesn't work out between Ron and Hermione. Theirs was a grand love story, forged in war and trial and tribulation, but that's where the damn problem is, isn't it? Because they're good at sacrificing themselves for each other, good at holding each other through the nightmares, good at helping each other forget, and burning the pain away in a flood of skin, and soft sighs, and open-mouthed kisses placed tenderly on vulnerable skin.

But they aren't good at… _domesticity_.

Ron is careless, and swears too blue, and is terrible with getting his laundry done, not to mention his godawful obsession with Indian food.

Hermione is hard to live with - everything must be 'just so', or she frets and gasps and sinks to her knees and can't breathe. Her schedule is maintained with religious fervour, and Ron's impulsiveness has no place in it.

So one July, four months after the war, after getting their own place in Hogsmeade so they could stay near the rebuilding efforts at Hogwarts, she links his fingers through his, tucked into his side where they sit on the damp green lawn of the Hogwarts grounds, and says, "This is… Are we… Did we mess this up?"  
She looks up at him, big doe eyes and a resolute bottom lip that refuses to tremble.

"I don't… know? Ah, damn, sweetheart," he sighs, and gathers her in his arms, tipping his head back against the giant oak, her face buried in his shoulder, to gaze through its foliage at the star-studded night sky. "We could've been alright you know? If it hadn't been for… well, all this." He waves a careless hand towards the ruins of Hogwarts, still covered in scaffolding and marred with the ash-black of explosive destruction.  
"But…," she pulls out from under his arm, to grasp both his hands in hers and look steadily at him. "But we can't be, can we? We can't be alright." Her expression is a little bleak, a little mournful, a little wry and all Hermione. He smiles back at her - a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes - and that is answer enough.

* * *

**A/n:**  
Tiny, fledgling, bite-sized chapters of a tiny, fledgling baby story. Updates every other day. Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Harry and Ginny marry nearly right away, all pomp and circumstance, though Ron's certain Harry wanted something smaller. They leave for an extended honeymoon, and soon after, Hermione gets a call from an archeological expedition in Brazil. She leaves too, in a flurry of panicked packing and hurried goodbyes and suddenly Ron's life is quiet, quiet, _quiet._

The apartment is silent, and Hermione's empty half of the cupboard remains untouched. The new Hogwarts term starts, and so do the Ministerial campaigns. Between loudly speculating on the Celeste Diggory vs. Emmanuel Higginthorp race for the Minister's position and paparazzi shots of the newlywed Potters on their around-the-world honeymoon, the tabloids nearly forget about Ron Weasley.


	3. Chapter 3

When he hears a knock on his door, a solid month after Hermione's departure and what the tabloids have dubbed the "wedding-of-the-century", Ron is a little startled. He trudges over to the door, in a ratty Cannons t-shirt, and pyjamas that hang too loose and too low, pulling it open with a whining creak to reveal Neville Longbottom.

It's late in the night, but he looks bright-eyed and wind-tousled, crisply ironed shirt worn under a dorky argyle sweater vest, and perfectly creased trousers. He raises a little brown bag up, that clearly contains a bottle, like a peace offering. "Ogden's Finest," he says, grinning. "May I?"

Ron steps away from the door to let him in, and Neville doesn't so much as raise as eyebrow at the disaster zone that is Ron's apartment. He banishes some laundry from the sofa, conjures up a pair of glass tumblers and sparks the fireplace to get a warm, merry crackle going. Ron seats himself beside Neville and watches him generously slosh the amber liquid into their glasses, casting flickering rainbow fractals on the rosewood coffee table. They each take one, and clink them together. Neville sips at his drink - Ron downs his in one practised swallow, Adam's apple furiously bobbing up and down, a dark shadow against honeyed skin in the firelight.

The soft pitter-patter of a sudden summer rainshower fills the silence of the apartment.  
Neville refills Ron's glass and hands it backs to him. "I heard the Cannons offered you a position."  
"Among others," Ron grunts back.  
"And you refused?" Neville's forehead puckers slightly, as he takes a sip of the firewhiskey.  
Ron smiles slightly, and takes another long draw of his drink, and it says what Neville needs to know - that he spent of the previous year **_hunting a man's soul down_**, that he's fought a war and lost good men and somehow lived, and that, now, tossing balls around for a living seems… Well, it doesn't goddamn seem **_enough_**.

"Come with me," Neville says, shifting on the sofa so one leg is folded and tucked under him, facing Ron, urgency writ in his tone. "Come with me, Ron. The International Auror Force _needs_ people, and we need people like _you_. Will you-" he runs a hand through his hair nervously, "will you promise to sleep on it? You can tell me what you think by the day after."

Ron doesn't look at Neville, the leaping orange-gold flames cast his face in amber-darkened relief. He looks a great deal older than eighteen. In a single, smooth movement, he downs the remaining whiskey, and sets the empty tumbler on the table with a resonant thud of glass-on-wood.

"You can take my answer now," he says, lowly. "Yes."

Neville exhales in relief.


	4. Chapter 4

At the Academy, it becomes their ritual. Neville will come to Ron's dorm, brown bag tucked under his arm and Ron will be there, tired blue eyes and almost-smile and quiet, easy conversation.

Their schedules are gruelling and merciless - endless theoretical modules and impossible phys ed that leaves them occasionally vomiting and drenched in sweat. Their battle skills trainers are the kind that say, "Don't fucking wimp out on me, you little shit! You gon' run cryin' to mama over a bit o' blood?" when there's a four-inch gash running through their chests. When they go back to their quarters, they are purple-bruised and broken-boned and tougher than anyone should have to be.

Ron becomes quieter, if that is possible, but there is a lightness in his step and his laugh comes easier, as if his terrors are being washed away every time he sweats and burns and bleeds. They are an impossible pair, everyone says - Neville with his elderly wardrobe, all sweater vests and cotton blend trousers, and Ron, who nearly always dresses like he's about to go sleep - fraying Quidditch t-shirts and loose jeans that hang almost indecently low.

They're used to tuning the world out, so it never really matters anyway.


	5. Chapter 5

There is a girl in Ron's hand-to-hand combat class, named Jamie, from Australia.

She's smart-alecky and quick on her feet, and nearly always beats Ron in MMA fights. When she asks Ron for coffee, he says yes, because she's pretty and she's funny and she's _there. _Neville doesn't really react when Ron tells him at night. Ron thinks maybe Neville drank a little more that night, that he bit his lips hard and stared at Ron the way he sometimes does, quiet and contemplative, that maybe, for a fleeting instant his heart did a funny flipping thing when he looked at Neville's sweetly familiar face, but it's _Jamie_ who asked him out and she's a brilliant girl, she really is and that's… Well, that's **that, **okay?

They date for a few weeks, maybe a little over a month. But he never spends the night at hers, and never asks her to come to his room. When they're done, he'll go back, and shower it all off, and Neville will come, like clockwork, and they'll drink and talk about everything and nothing. (Ron never mentions Jamie. Neville never brings her up either.)

Eventually, it comes to a head, because Jamie says she '_Goddamn deserves better, Ronald!_', and Ron can't really bring himself to disagree. When he puts up no fight, she softens her stance and walks up to him, leaning up on her toes to kiss his cheek. He winds his hand through her hair, and smiles fondly. He says sorry and she smiles, half happy, half bitter. "Go to him, Ron. And stop lying to yourself." She runs his fingers across the sharp edge of his cheekbones, almost nostalgic, and then she's walking away, leaving her words ringing like war drums in his head.


	6. Chapter 6

When they graduate, it is natural, obvious even, to get an apartment together. They don't splurge, because Ron's not made of galleons, alright? And Neville hates asking his grandmother for anything, anyway, so a studio flat with twin beds in a tiny bedroom, in London's East End, is what they choose. It's furnished with an eclectic mix of IKEA pieces that've seen better days and thrift store junk, but it's all _theirs_, and that makes a hundred times sweeter.

They don't end up staying at the flat very much, in the end. Their job tosses them carelessly across the globe, but the IAF recognises what a brilliant team they make, Neville with preppy good-boy affability, Ron with his lazy, don't-really-give-a-f*ck charm. So they throw them together, and Ron kills for the first time in cold blood in Macau. He shakes in his sleep and Neville holds him through the night.

Neville tortures a captive vampire prince in a tiny beat-up shack on the border of Chile and Peru, flaying him until his skin peels, burning his insides with dead man's blood, breaking bone after bone after- Neville vomits and screams and pulls at his own skin, bloodied with that of the dead vampire's. Ron buries the body, and presses a bottle of scotch in Neville's hand, and then presses him against the mattress until he can control the shivering. And when that is done, he hums a song he thinks maybe Molly used to hum to him when he was little and used to have nightmares of spiders, until Neville falls asleep.


	7. Chapter 7

Sometimes, when they're home, and a little lost in the haze that only butterbeer brings, Neville catches himself thinking about Ron's hipbones. It's not… It's just… Well, it's just bloody _there_. His pants barely hang on the low vee of his waist, a thin, dark trail of auburn hair snaking from his navel to the edge of his pyjamas, and he's human, alright? He has eyes, and Ron never really gives a shit when his t-shirts ride up high, or his trous slide down to this side of rated R. So his eyes drag down the broad curve of his shoulders, the ungainly sprawl of his arms across their couch, the soft worn shirt that clings lightly to his skin, and tries not imagine sucking a purple bruise along the hard ridge of his hips.

If his eyes turn dark, or his ears turn pink, Ron never comments on it. He casually shifts a little closer, maybe, but that's because they're _friends_, goddamnit, and they're a little pissed on fine old Laphroaig, and maybe it blurs the lines a little, but so _what?_


	8. Chapter 8

_Neville _**_runs_**.

The mansion bursts behind him in fiery inferno, a series of controlled blasts that run down the spine of the Jacobean structure. Ahead of him, the pristine lawn-garden spread in a verdant, smoke-stained haze. His feet are a staccato pulse against the flagstoned floor, sweat and blood dripping into his eyes and blurring his vision, heart thundering so loudly it's a wonder he can hear anything at all. His eyes focus on a singular smudge of black ahead of him- only- only- that's Ron! He's alive- Oh thank _fuck_, he's alive, he's **_alive!_**

And Neville runs faster, and the floor trembles beneath him from the force of the fourth explosion, and that's when he sees it. The fifth charge, the final charge, just metres ahead of him, between him and his only route of escape. The red light embedded in the plastic explosive blinks, quicker and quicker, and Nevillle _knows _in that instant, that he isn't going to make it, that _this is it, goddamnit, this is how it ends - because of one _goddamn_ hiccup in the plan_, and in the distance he can see Ron's silhouette, and he feels the briefest surge of joy, before he hears Ron scream, "**_ACCIO!_**" and Neville is lifted off his feet, and is dragged through the air right into Ron.

They collide, and the breath is knocked right out him, and the last charge goes, and the manor fucking _explodes_, but all Neville can think of is _he saved me he saved me he saved me. _And he realises he's laughing, a little crazily, and that's Ron's laughing back, crinkled blue eyes and gummy smile and all, his hands still sort of wrapped around Neville's waist from when the Summoning charm threw them together.

And it seems so natural, so easy as breathing, when Neville fits his lips against Ron's, heartbeat going crazy on adrenaline and joy, hands tangling in soft auburn hair. He tastes like salt and smoke, and beneath it, apples.

It is everything Neville ever dreamed of.

**_-Fin-_**


End file.
